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Abstract

The paper critically dissects the contemporary policy landscape and its ability to counter precarious work for construction workers in the Indian context. By focusing on the governance challenges faced by welfare institutions and the pre-existing fault lines exposed by the pandemic, the paper argues that social policies are languishing and inefficient to respond to the challenges of growing precarity. The paper uses Breman’s conception of ‘Footloose labour’ to understand informality related to construction workers and Gilbert and Terrell’s social policy analytical framework to understand the institutional response. The two major arguments that make the social policy languish are the inability of the policy to alter neoliberal employment relationships and the operational challenges that institutions face in implementing welfare schemes for many footloose labourers. Moreover, the situation is further exacerbated by inherent contradictions of the state which is entangled between promoting economic growth through neoliberal policies while consecutively ensuring labour welfare. If the Institutional challenges persist along with the persuasion of neoliberal reforms, footloose labour is only going to be further marginalized and pushed to limits.

Keywords

footloose labour institutions neoliberal policy

Introduction

A stark characteristic of working in India is employment in the informal economy. In India, over 90% of the workforce is informal meaning it works devoid of any social insurance (Mehrotra, 2019). International Labour Organization (ILO, 2002: 54) has specifically laid out important characteristics of working in an informal economy which are ‘undefined workplaces, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, low levels of skills and productivity, low or irregular incomes, long working hours and lack of access to information, markets, finance, training and technology’. A huge share of employment in the informal economy has been found to be an institutional issue (Rodgers, 2020) and has also been argued as a case of inefficiency on the part of legal institutions, which has provided a case for discouraging formalization (Maiti and Sen, 2010). Like everywhere else in the world, there has been a rise in precarious working conditions in India (Maiti, 2012), which highlights the need for understanding the policy and an aligned institutional framework for countering it. The case of implementing social policies for footloose labour in India serves as an important case for the political economy of welfare and provides critical insights into the power play between capital and labour being unfolded through the governance of public institutions.

The concept and understanding of precarious work are diversified in the literature. Campbell and Price (2016) have highlighted five types of conceptualizations based on recent debates which are precariousness in employment, precarious work, precarious workers, precariat and precarity. For our understanding of precarious work in this paper, I use the characteristic of precarious work provided by ILO (2012) ‘Workers in precarious employment suffer from inferior working conditions in all aspects of work: security, predictability, health and safety, pay and benefits and access to social security’ (p. 3). This conceptualization provides a simplistic yet nuanced understanding of precarious work and, more importantly, provides an analytical lens to critically evaluate the institutions. Employment relations in India are characterized by two phenomena: informality and aligned precarious working conditions. Against the backdrop of growing precarity among construction workers in India, the paper based on the critical review of literature, analyses the workings of the Building and Other Construction workers welfare Board (BOCWWB) to tackle precarious work and argues that the current policy framework is languishing.

The paper first presents a conceptual understanding using Breman’s (1996) concept of footloose labour along with contextual information on BOCWWB. The paper then presents its two core arguments related to languishing social policy. First, by focusing on the employment relationship between footloose labourers and the role of contractors, the paper argues how BOCWWB cannot make any macrostructural changes in the life of workers. Second, the paper uses Gilbert and Terrell’s (2013) analytical framework for evaluating social policies for construction workers and highlights the operational challenges faced by BOCWWB along with the inherent contradictions of the state. The contradictions are being unfolded by focusing on the relationship between state and capital along with the growing mobilization of informal workers in some parts of India. The paper then focuses on how the pandemic exposed the pre-existing fault lines of marginalization of labour which is then followed by the conclusion. In this paper, the author uses ‘footloose labour’ and migrant construction workers interchangeably.

Footloose Labour and BOCWWB

Breman (1996) based on his anthropological study on the working poor in western India, derived the concept of ‘footloose labour’ whose work is characterized by temporary occupations in non-agricultural industries. This was a formation of a new category of workers who were previously a part of the agricultural society but because of the transitions in the economy were compelled to leave rural areas and migrate to urban areas in search of work, especially during the time of non-harvesting seasons. These workers are rural migrants who head to urban areas in search of non-agricultural work and are mostly landless labourers. In some ways, this categorization in the mid-1990s presented a growing class of underprivileged workers who were promised employment and growth in the wake of economic reforms in India in 1991 but mostly ended up doing what we now know as ‘Precarious work’. Breman (1996) in his anthropological study studied the working life of the Halpati, a tribal agricultural community (p. 33), and observed three important types of migration within the community. These were (a) daily commuting, (b) seasonal circulation, and (c) semipermanent or permanent settlements elsewhere. The second category of seasonal circulation is more dominant in the contemporary landscape of migration patterns. Mostly unskilled (in a technical sense) and due to economic restructuring, migrants were pushed out of agricultural fields and were forced to work in temporary jobs, mostly in construction and other aligned fields in the urban areas. Breman (1994) in his other work has also called them, ‘Wage Hunters and Gatherers’. Three critical aspects define the working life of ‘footloose labour’. These are a lack of specificity and regularity in work, the need to diversify their work for survival, and finally, the labour-intensive nature of all work they do (Breman, 1996). In some ways, what Breman (1996) was researching and finding was the early empirical traces of precarious work. The conception of ‘footloose labour’ is based on the interactional process of a capitalist economy which is further unleashed by neoliberal reforms, unique caste, and class relations which further shape the labour and employment relations in India. The consequence of such an interaction is witnessed as a rise in precarious working conditions for labourers.

Breman (2010) reflecting on the earlier forms of bonded labour that existed in colonial India found contemporary labour relations to have practices of ‘neo-bondage’ owing to indebtedness which forces the labourers to comply with the nature of employment. It is conceptually important to throw light on two forms of labour that Breman has identified in his two different accounts. Footloose labourers who were documented in the mid-1990s were found to be seasonal migrants migrating from rural to urban areas to work in the informal economy. They were footloose in the sense because of the temporality of their jobs and the intertwined lack of permanency which forced them to diversify their work all within the realm of the informal economy. At the same time, the neo-bondage refers to a trap of indebtedness and neo because of relationships which were impersonal, of short durations, contractual and monetized (Breman, 2010). The common factor that binds footloose and neo-bondage labour is the lack of any plausible alternative to find work in any formal sector, and hence, they fall prey to working in the informal economy in the lowest strata of jobs which are inherently precarious in nature.

The construction industry in India is in some ways a reflection of the changing dynamics of employment relationships emerging out of a renewed trust in the neoliberal reforms, implemented since 1991. Increased reliance on the contractual nature of short-term employment, and the use of contractors for (mis)managing labour relations has been the hallmark of the construction industry in the previous few decades. From a macro perspective, the construction industry is one of the important industries among the others, which is thriving on the unfreedom of labour. For example, several industries in developing economies are part of the global production network whose production is deeply embedded in the precarity of the worker. The precarious working conditions have been rampant in the garment industry (Devraj, 2022; Mezzadri, 2016) and automobile manufacturing (Barnes, 2018). Moreover, the rhetoric of self-employment has also gained more prominence in the public discourse post-1991. The consequence is the creation of a labour class that is neither proletariat nor bourgeois but a petty producer integrated into Global production network (GPNs) through mediators called, ‘contractors’ (Tripathi and Mishra, 2023: 153). With a shift from an agrarian society to slowly moving towards industrial economy, the manufacturing industry has gained prominence as a vehicle for economic development and an avenue for employment opportunities. These industries are essentially embedded in the global production networks where the developing economies serve as the location for industrial production. This has resulted in an array of workers contributing to the lowest level of production within the hierarchy of multiple levels of production. As the enthusiasm of these industries as engines of economic growth captured the consciousness of political leaders and policymakers, simultaneously, there has been a reluctance to address an important question of the use of informal labour within international subcontracting agencies (Das, 2016). The Sustainable development Goal of “Decent work” by ILO remains to be a highly aspirational one as the contemporary Indian economy runs on the unfree labour of erstwhile peasants who now work in precarious work environments in manufacturing and construction.

The government through its legal framework has maintained various laws which try to ensure the social protection of construction workers. One of the most significant of them is Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board Act, 1996 (BOCW Act, Government of India, 1996). Under the BOCW act, The Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Boards (BOCWWB) are established. Before moving further in deconstructing the policy framework of BOCWWB, attention needs to be paid that the Government of India has amalgamated all different labour laws into four specific codes. But the requirement to run the BOCWWB for every state remains mandatory under the new Code on Social Security, 2020 (Ministry of Law and Justice, 2020:18). This analysis is specifically limited to BOCWWB which remains the the hallmark institution in the country (both currently and in the future) for delivering welfare policies for construction workers.

BOCWWB is the primary institution for registering construction workers who are typically migrants and then availing them of the social welfare policies which are decided by that particular state’s board. Every state in India has its own BOCWWB which is run by the state government. The Government of India has indeed declared a model welfare scheme (Government of India, 2018) which should act as a guiding document for the states to follow. Some examples of model welfare schemes are life and disability cover in the case of an occupational accident, health and maternity cover; financial assistance for children of construction workers; creation of housing facilities through labour shed cum night shelters for workers in transit; skill development of workers and spreading of awareness of the schemes run by BOCWWB; pension schemes depending on the financial capacity of the state for workers who are registered for 10 years under the BOCWWB. The BOCWWB across different states typically provides identity cards with a photograph by registering workers with the board, fixes normal working hours, prescribes wages and overtime wages, maintains registers and records, and makes sure that the employer which are construction companies in this case provides construction workers with decent living facilities and safe working conditions both on-site (Sarkar, 2021) and most importantly implements social policies for workers who are registered. Hence BOCWWB is the nodal institution for regulating work in the construction industry and implementing social policies for workers.

Languishing Social Policy

The paper argues that the current policy framework to tackle precarious work in India is languishing because of two main reasons. These are:

I. Although well-intentioned and much required, BOCWWB are incapable of providing macrostructural changes in the working lives of construction workers against the backdrop of a neoliberal employment relation which is characterized by reliance on labour contractors.

II. The micro benefits in the form of social welfare schemes which BOCWWB tries to implement are characterized by the failure of the government to implement welfare measures marked by inherent contradictions within a state which is entangled between promoting economic growth through neoliberal reforms, generating employment and the need to provide social security to workers.

BOCWWB and Macrostructural Changes

The industrial relations of footloose labour in contemporary India are characterized by an economy which uses labour for promoting economic growth in industries like manufacturing and construction while the working lives of labour remain deeply vulnerable. The inability of BOCWWB to create big structural changes is due to the contractual nature of work which is done by labourers in the construction industry. Against the backdrop of flexibility under neoliberalization, workers must rely on the contractualization of work which lacks any sort of stability or direction for their future. It implies that, for this moment, the worker is selling their labour at a particular price. This contractual nature of work is further facilitated by labour contractors.

The role of contractors in governing the professional and personal lives of a migrant construction worker is of immense importance. They play an important role in capitalist production via the supply of an army of cheap labour from interior pockets of India using various binding mechanisms. Raj and Axelby (2019) have substantially focused on the role of labour contractors, ‘who operates through formal as well as informal networks to facilitate the kinds of informal, temporary and flexible employment practices that have fuelled the Indian economic boom’ (p. 275). These are middlemen who in simple terms connect workers in rural areas to construction sites in the different expanding urban metropolis of India and thereby perform two important functions. First, they help workers to get casual construction jobs in cities, and second, they fulfil the gap in demand and supply by supplying labour which is most often cheap to construction sites in urban areas. This is one of the simplistic understandings. While discussing the role of labour contractors, Raj and Axelby (2019) have highlighted other studies, wherein these contractors appear as, ‘Exploitative Gangmasters’ (Breman, 1985, 2003), and ‘Vulnerable and Precarious brokers’ (Picherit, 2009). Contractors play a critical role in the supply of labour through networks, maintaining control over labour by withholding wages and prioritizing the need of the company over labour (Raj and Axelby, 2019). Prasad-Aleyamma (2017) while doing her ethnographic fieldwork with construction workers in Kerala in Southern India found that ‘Contractors used unpaid wages to tie workers down to them’ (p. 187). Moreover, she also found the practice of non-payment of wages and underpayment of what was promised earlier. The attitude of contractors in many instances also lacks apathy, for example, commenting on tribal labourers working in urban areas, one contractor commented on the lack of their agency which is used to exploit them,

‘They don’t know anyone; they don’t negotiate and they have nowhere to go’. ‘Local workers or those hired at the nakka (labour congregation point) have a home to go back to-when the day ends, they drop their tools and go home to their families, whereas migrants are easy to get to work longer hours.’ (Jain and Sharma, 2019: 74)

Contracts also play a key role in some sort of negotiations with employers and help labourers, who are often young and unaware, navigate a long journey and gave them some advance money as well. (Shah and Lerche, 2020). One another important reason for the hegemony of these contractors is that migrant workers rely on their sources to get seasonal work and hence cannot afford to complain or organize against them (Moose et al., 2005). Hence, contractors are key to the process of accumulation and exploitation, but in many cases, they also appear as positive facilitators as they can find work for poor labourers in a society which is grappling with unemployment. Migrant workers are unaware of the work opportunities available in urban areas and in each season they do not necessarily go to the same urban centres. They rely on these subcontractors who have strong connections through a chain of social relations with big infrastructure companies who need a supply of labour at their construction sites. This in turn provides an opportunity for the contractors to dictate their terms which are often motivated by the company’s mandates of supply of abundant cheap labour.

From paying advances to providing employment opportunities by guiding them to their destination locations, contractors are considered an important block in internal migration trajectories taken by millions of construction workers within India. The advance payments made by contractors create a dependency on migrant workers and thereby trapping them in a cycle of debt in addition to that the lack of agency of migrant workers is also witnessed in terms of lack of their choice on the work conditions and the destination where they are going to migrate (Mishra, 2020). Moreover, contractors have also been found to be accountable for holding the wages of migrant workers, enabling wage fraud, and hence employing exploitative practices to further marginalize labour (Jayaram and Varma, 2020). To earn the profits, the contractors have to organize migration, especially during the non-harvesting seasonal cycles, which also further points to the lack of awareness and knowledge on the part of migrant workers on the availability of work in different cities of the country (Raj and Axelby, 2019). Thus, the earlier reference to neo-bondage (Breman, 2010) is a characteristic which is reflected through the skewed relationship dynamic between the contractor and the migrant workers. But a critical question also arises related to the need for contractors in contemporary employment relations. The reality firms hire subcontracting companies in the construction business wherein the subcontracting companies finally have their micro contractors who are responsible for recruiting and bringing workers on board. (Singh et al., 2020). The reliance on the chain of subcontracting is to reduce the cost of recruitment of labour along with the contractor’s ability to discipline labour and reduce the scope of solidarity among them (Singh et al., 2020; Srivastava, 2019; Sundar, 2005). Thus, the non-institutional characteristics of the labour–contractor relationship are also one of the prime factors in driving the precariousness of workers and characterizing labourers as footloose. As a result of dependency on contractors/middlemen, labour is economically dependent on diminished agency leading to their social subordination (Breznik, 2023).

The contractual nature of work which is temporary in nature and the need to find work through reliance on labour contractors make labour, ‘footloose’. They are in a perpetual state of transition and this is a stark reality of their working lives. BOCWWB is unable to respond to any of these macro practices which are the hallmark of casual employment in the informal economy in India. BOCWWB’s accountability starts the moment labour comes to the construction sites but the journey to find work and reach a construction site is also arduous. Labour contractors along with big infrastructure companies operate in the nexus of employing cheap labour. Moreover, the contractual and temporary nature of the work that they do bereft them to any kind of permanence. In fact, Breman (1994) has called the workers, ‘Wage hunters and gatherers’. The policy framework of BOCWWB is designed in such a way that it tries to provide fair working and living conditions at the construction sites but does not respond to the macro structures of the economy. It justifiable responds more to the conceptualization of ‘regulation’ but misses the larger question of norms of recruitment and aligned exploitative practices which are normalized in an informal economy.

Operational Challenges Faced by BOCWWB

To evaluate BOCWWB in detail, I draw our attention to the elements of the social policy analytical framework, suggested by Gilbert and Terrell (2013) which consists of four major questions. These questions are related to the basis of social allocation, types of social provision to be allocated, strategies for delivery and the ways to finance these provisions. The analytical framework is useful for evaluating social policies for footloose labourers in two important ways. It provides a lens for technically evaluating the policies and the operational challenges being faced, and second and more importantly, it provides a nuanced understanding of the dimensions of social choice for footloose labour.

The Bases for Social Allocation

BOCWWB justifiably uses the selective approach for implementing social welfare policies for construction workers but mandates registration of the worker in BOCWWB of that particular state. For registration, the worker has to be above 18 years and not more than 60 years. Moreover, the worker must be engaged in construction work for not less than 90 days in the preceding 12 months and is entitled to registration (BOCW Act, Government of India, 1996). Once the worker registers with the board, the board provides an identity card that acts as a sort of gateway for accessing social welfare benefits. BOCWWB is specifically meant for construction workers and the policy document defines an array of manual work under the term, ‘Construction worker’. For example, the definition of ‘Building and Other construction work’ includes ‘construction, alteration, repairs, maintenance, or demolition, with relation to buildings, roads, railways, streets’ and many more categories (BOCW Act, Government of India, 1996: 4).

The question of social allocation is critical concerning BOCWWB in terms of the registration of workers for getting entitlement benefits. Most of the workers are ‘footloose’, they go where the work is available and depend on labour contractors for that. In many instances, these workers have been found to have worked in more than six to seven different states of the country in the past few years. Registration with BOCWWB is an operational requirement but it involves an equally daunting set of procedures and complexities. This is a complex problem and difficulties arise because of the migratory nature of their work. The need for having worked in the province for 90 days before registration on the board could be a concern. If the workers are engaged in a piece work for shorter durations like 2 months and then move on to a different location, this limits their eligibility for receiving welfare and this questions the basis of social allocation of welfare entitlements in some ways. Social allocations are being hampered by relatively rigid entitlement requirements which fail to consider the contemporary migratory nature of informal work. This negatively contributes to the alienation of labourers from any benefits and limits the reach of policy.

The Nature of the Social Provision

The nature of social provisions is largely cash-based assistance along with some other interlinked nationally implemented social schemes like subsidized food grains with the help of the Public Distribution System and health insurance under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana. The cash-based assistance is available under the welfare schemes which focus on Life and disability cover (in the case of occupational hazard or death), financial assistance to children of construction workers and special financial assistance received during the pandemic. The cash is provided through the system of Direct Bank Transfer (DBT) of those construction workers who are eligible and have registered under a particular BOCWWB. For the DBT to take place, the Aadhaar card (Unique Identity card for Indian citizens) of the worker needs to be aligned with his or her bank account and these details need to be submitted as part of the registration. Thus, rather than relying on cash versus in-kind transfers, the social policies of BOCWWB use an array of ways to reach construction workers.

Two major issues are being faced in the nature of the social provision. First, it is noteworthy that the states have realized that the migrant construction workers who are poor and vulnerable will need cash transfers and that works as the best option while they work in an informal economy. However, this realization is not enough, as for the cash transfers that need to take place, the workers need to be registered to BOCWWB wherein their Aadhaar card must be aligned with their bank account. If their Aadhaar card is not aligned with their bank account, then the worker would not be able to renew his or her registration and hence would not be able to avail of the benefits. Jha (2021) while researching the welfare benefits received during the pandemic noted that countrywide around 9 million workers in 2020 were not able to renew their registration. Second, the question Gilbert and Terrell (2013: 140) call ‘the substance of social provision’. The social welfare substance which has been mentioned above are noteworthy and indeed much required and helpful but in no way able to change the employment relations of informal workers or help them to find any sustainable livelihood options which would help them to come out of poverty. That perhaps is not the policy objective of BOCWWB, and hence, I argue that it is a ‘languishing social policy’.

The Strategies for the Delivery of Provisions

BOCWWB is located in one major city of the state but has offices in other districts and relies on public administrators who manage the affairs of BOCWWB and implement welfare schemes. The other important factor is how BOCWWBs are closely aligned with civil society organizations and labour activists. If the BOCWWB works in coordination with these organizations, then it can better understand the issues faced by workers locally and use the resources of these grassroots organizations to deliver the services and reach out to more workers. The issue being faced with the delivery strategy is that the performance of every state’s BOCWWB varies and depends on how efficient governance strategies are and the commitment of the state’s leadership. Moreover, ideological undertones of prioritizing economic growth over labour welfare can also be a factor (this will be further discussed in inherent contradictions). Thus, the delivery strategy provides a unique puzzle where the BOCW Act, Government of India (1996) provides homogeneous norms and rules, but the state’s governance efficiency makes the running of BOCWWB a heterogenous affair. At the end of the day, local administration and governance are the keys to realizing the true objectives of BOCWWB.

The Ways to Finance These Provisions

The Government of India has specifically brought about The Building and other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act, 1996. The objective of this act is to collect a cess on the cost of construction incurred by the employers to augment resources for the BOCWWB. In simple words, at every construction site, the government of India mandated the employer to pay a cess which will not exceed 2% of the cost and not less than 1%. This cess will further be used for running BOCWWB and the aligned welfare schemes. Moreover, any grants and loans offered by the Central government will also act to run BOCWWB. Moreover, the policy documents also inform that all expenditures on administrative costs should not go beyond 5% of the total expenses in the financial year.

Hence, the finance provision has been well planned and thought out through a robust mechanism. But the bigger issues at hand are the underutilization of funds (Bhardwaj, 2014; Shanmughasundaram, 2020; Syed, 2013) which points out unwillingness to aggressively implement welfare policies and spend the collected amount.

The State: Intended Government Failure Wrapped in Inherent Contradictions

The precarious condition of migrant construction workers and the effort to provide them with adequate social policy measures has reflected in intended government failure. The government’s failure can be understood in terms of the weak implementation of welfare policies and the performance of BOCWWB. However, the case of governing migrant workers also begs for a deeper understanding of the role and attitude of the Indian state. Here, I argue that government failure is further wrapped in inherent contradictions. The contradictions appear where the government intends to support neoliberal policies but cannot completely abolish the social protection framework which is mandated by legislations such as Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996. Here, two important phenomena have shaped the working condition of labour simultaneously. First, the reliance of the Indian state on neoliberal policies for improving economic growth happened through a transition to a market-oriented economy post-1991. This led to non-standard and informal employment which was a consequence of precarious contractualized and casualized employment (Jose, 2022). The neoliberal push has manifested in the Indian context through state-sponsored capitalism which has been argued to favour a handful of capitalists. The creation of special economic zones for promoting exports presents a classic example of what Harvey (2004) calls ‘accumulation by dispossession’ of the rural poor whose only asset, i.e., land is taken away. Moreover, the creation of SEZs can also be viewed as, an ‘extra-economic process of coercive barriers expropriation typically exercised by states to help capital overcome barriers to accumulation’ (Levien, 2011: 454) resulting in ‘spatialized production of poverty’ (Anwar and Carmody, 2016: 121). Although the creation of SEZs is a separate issue, it is important in the context of migrant construction workers because often many rural groups whose lands have been dispossessed end up doing precarious work in construction sites in India. The state–capital relationship is more witnessed in terms of land grabs which essentially has led the state to allocate large portions of land to facilitate industries and thus built the narrative of facilitating economic growth. Research studies have highlighted this regime of dispossession where poor peasants have to give up their land (Chatterjee, 2020), and many concerned groups have also been found to be protesting against these acts (Sud, 2020), which primarily emerge out of the state-capital nexus. Reed and Kundu (2000) noted that capital accumulation in Southern Asia had been aided through institutional arrangements. This has meant that the state is becoming a collective agency of the capitalist classes (Bhambhri, 2016). The state–capital relations have been deeply intertwined especially the post-1991 reforms. Bardhan (2022) argues that the current state supports ‘crony oligarchy’ which is reflected in the forms of favours and special regulatory dispensations for a small group of reserved capitalists. Moreover, focusing on the construction sector, Kapur and Vaishnav (2018) argue that

Given the regulatory intensity of the state with respect to land and the construction sector’s cash-dependence, builders have an incentive to pay for election expenses on behalf of politicians through unreported transactions in exchange for regulatory and policy favours. (p. 75)

The policies like Electoral bond schemes allows for large sums of donation to political parties which remain anonymous (Sinha and Wyatt, 2019) and, hence, acts as a vehicle for large-scale financial transactions between political parties and corporates. Thus, the rise of precarious work in construction sites is a consequence of the deep state-capital nexus where the state cannot force regulations on the worksite as perpetually their election campaigns are funded by the corporates.

Second, some states of India with a more robust social democratic framework managed to run public institutions like BOCWWB in a comparatively more effective manner. Hence, Tillin (2022) poses an important question of whether India has a ‘subnational welfare regime’? This is a larger question concerning the autonomy of different states in India to implement social policies. Mahmood (2017) further argues that labour flexibility across states emerges from the ‘socio-economic support bases of parties or caste/class composition’ (p. 148). This essentially means that states which have a traditional base of support from the business class will be motivated to take large-scale labour reforms in favour of the capital in comparison to the states which have a heterogenous support base with more reliance on the middle class or marginalized communities. Similarly, expanding on similar observation, Agarwala (2013c) argues that,

the social base and electoral context of party politics, as well as the economic policies of the government in power, interact with informal workers’ movements from below to explain why informal workers in some states have been more successful than those in other states in ensuring their social rights. (p. 72)

Even after significant land reforms and the creation of welfare measures in the form of the establishment of labour welfare boards, the continued precarity and the sustenance of ‘unfree labour’ have taken place on account of two important intersecting phenomena. The feudalistic patronage networks in the form of the nexus of state–capital relations ensure labour regulations are relaxed and economic growth is prioritized, while on the other hand, the subcontracting system essentially uses caste and class as a method to mobilize and provide cheap labour on the construction sites. This puts the construction workers in a prolonged cycle of doing precarious work for longer time periods. The workers have very less power to undo the larger structural reforms in terms of the neoliberal push but even to access welfare measures, workers need to undergo an administrative process to claim their citizenship rights. For example, Carswell and De Neve (2020) through their ethnographic work show how poor people in Tamil Nadu rely on their political patronage and engage with paperwork and processes along with navigating their identities to claim benefits and claim their citizenship rights. In this case, access to welfare measures becomes an even more complex process as the construction workers are migrants and essentially in a foreign land within their own country. Wilkinson (2014) identifies three important reasons for the presence of political patronage in India: lack of bureaucratic autonomy and the absence of external programmatic political parties which essentially do not require state resources; the presence of ethnic heterogeneity and finally the rising level of political and electoral competition (p. 261). Thus, from the macro perspective, political patronage has been used by the workers to bargain with the state and claim welfare benefits which led to the creation of labour welfare boards, but it has not radically transformed the persuasion of neoliberal policies. Here, the other kind of patronage of the capital has been more impactful, in the sense of creation of footloose labour for production, and hence, precarity and informality continue to be a significant characteristic of working in the Indian economy for construction workers.

The question of the importance and sustained relevance of the trade unions is critical to understand the response against increasing precarization of workers. Three important phenomena are responsible for the reduced bargaining power of trade unions over various decades. These are the fragmentation of the movement of unions in the 1970s and the 80s, industrial disputes and lockouts in the early 1990s and 2000 and finally the state sanctions and political patronage. (Barnes, 2015). Moreover, the earlier roots of trade unionism are interlinked with the freedom struggle, which in some ways created a pathway for political linkages from the very beginning. (Rao, 2007). This had an interesting impact especially since the economic reforms were introduced in 1991. The union leaders were faced with the dilemma of choosing between their allegiance to political leaders who had given away to neoliberal reforms in the early 1990s and their commitment to labour solidarity and thereby voicing their concerns against the reforms (Badigannavar et al., 2021; Burgess, 2004). After more than three decades of reforms, it seems that the choice has been made where political allegiance appears to be the priority, at least in the construction industry. Although the number of union memberships has increased over the years (Badigannavar et al., 2021), it has not managed to alter the macro neoliberal reforms structure which has been relied upon by the Indian state for accelerating economic growth. A few unions like the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) have been credited for organizing women informal workers in the construction industry (Baruah, 2010), and beyond but their ability to transform macroeconomic structures appears to be far-fetched. It is not that all the collective action has been lost post the liberalization period. Agarwala (2013b) has argued that the strategies for collective action by informal workers have been transformed from the traditional reliance on bargaining from the employer, and the strategies for collective demands have been reoriented to the state. For example, Agarwala (2013a) notes,

Informal workers’ new collectives action strategies have led to state concessions that vary according to the state’s social base, electoral context, and economic agenda. Informal workers’ organizations are finding new opportunity structures both in competitive, pro-poor, populism and in neoliberal rhetoric-thereby highlighting the unintended consequences of both. (p. 195)

The inherent contradiction of the various state governments on accelerating neoliberal policies and simultaneously advocating for labour welfare through BOCWWB became more evident in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The inherent contradictions are understood in terms of the state government relaxing labour laws to further facilitate economic growth which had drastically stagnated owing to a prolonged countrywide lockdown which created a sense of uncertainty. For example, many states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana had amended labour laws wherein one of the most prominent features is increasing working hours which go up to 12 hours per day. (PRS Legislative Research, 2020). Moreover, there is also an argument that these proposed changes to labour laws are unconstitutional (Katju, 2020). There is a real threat that the suspension of labour laws would intensify informality and would bring more insecurity to workers (Sundar and Sapkal, 2020). These reforms have made labour more vulnerable and prone to exploitation and worsening inequality (Miyamura, 2021). These reforms were passed without any interaction with trade unions or labour welfare organizations and the singular aim seems to be the prioritization of economic growth. The creation of employment opportunities is also provided one of the important reasons but such opportunities often bypass norms and regulations which are created to make the working life of labour better. The situation was noticed globally and even ILO urged various Indian states to rethink and consult with worker’s unions before scrapping workers’ rights (Pal and Khanna, 2020). As a response to these amendments, various unions and workers staged a nationwide protest against these reforms. On the one hand, through the legal framework, labour welfare institutions like BOCWWB are formed and institutionalized to make sure labour welfare policies are implemented and on the other hand, state governments amend labour laws and take a sharp neoliberal turn to accelerate and prioritize economic growth. This neoliberal turn is only paradoxical to the values and ethos that BOCWWB stands for.

Pandemic and the Urgent Question of Labour

The pandemic made the preexisting fault lines of labour relations of footloose labourers more perceptible not only to the Indian masses but to the world. On March 24, 2020, when the Government of India announced 21 days of nationwide lockdown (with a notice period of 4 hours), the most hardly hit of the group of individuals were ‘footloose labourers’. As it was a sudden lockdown, without any warning, the labourers did not get a chance to move back to their villages from where they had migrated. What followed are the scenes of chaos, hopelessness, and desperation to reach back to villages without any kind of transportation being available. While all the other citizens were at home, footloose labourers along with their families, which includes infants walked hundreds of miles in scorching heat on national highways of India. According to early estimates, around 25 million migrants were forced to reach home in challenging circumstances (Jha and Kumar, 2021; Srivastava, 2020a). It was a humanitarian crisis unfolding in a challenging form directly as a result of the way the lockdown was implemented. While the footloose labourers started walking back, they fought with fear of hunger, lack of shelter and the vulnerability of becoming infected with the virus (Breman, 2020: 903). Moreover, the pandemic made millions of informal workers unemployed and on the brink of having to take debt to navigate the uncertainties. The role of BOCWWB in providing welfare measures during these times is of critical importance. Jha (2021) has focused on the measures that various governments provided to footloose labourers in the wake of the pandemic. Some of these measures are a cash transfer programme through Direct bank transfer, special trains, and buses to get back home. There are variations depending on the state on who received cash transfers. For example, in several states, more than 50% of the registered workers received cash assistance, while only 8% of the registered workers received cash benefits in Delhi (Jha, 2021). This meant that a one-time cash transfer of Rs 1000 (Average: 12.07 US$) was undertaken by most of the states while some states gave more than this amount and some gave monthly (Jha, 2021). Many workers could also not receive benefits as either they were not registered with BOCWWB or their bank account was not merged with their Aadhaar card. Hence, the operational issues also became an impeding factor in rolling out welfare measures for footloose labourers. Moreover, initially, the special trains that were being run so that the footloose labour could reach back home had the provision of booking tickets online, which proved difficult for some workers who did not have the access to smartphones (Yadav and Priya, 2020). Rajan et al. (2020: 1033) have highlighted Srivastava’s (2020b) observation that internal migrants, whom we refer to as ‘footloose labour’ in this paper face four important challenges (p. 3). These are lack of civic identity and civic citizenship in the destination areas; absorbed into the labour markets in less favourable ways than non-migrants; weaker social networks compared to non-migrants; and finally, extreme difficulties in establishing claims and entitlements. These sharp observations on the precarious conditions of footloose labour indicate the fact that the large institutions which were given the mandate for their welfare, in this case, which is BOCWWB have been sluggish, to say the least. The pandemic exposed the preexisting institutional flaws of BOCWWB. These are identified as:

Despite a homogeneous structure of norms and procedures, the heterogeneous performance of BOCWWB in different states points out the larger goal of the effectiveness of local governance regimes.

Lethargic attitude towards registration of workers resulting in a denial of entitlements due to lack of registrations and related errors in aligning the Aadhaar card with the bank account.

Underutilization of funds for the implementation of welfare policies which could be termed as a lack of willingness and running the BOCWWB for tokenism.

Conclusion

The paper has argued that the current Indian social policies are languishing and are unable to respond to the challenges of precarious work for construction workers in India. The paper has also attempted to throw light on the policy aspects of the larger debate on unfree labour (Brass, 2021; Gordon, 2018). Through this paper, there has been an opportunity to present a case of how labour continues to work under precarious conditions even after the formation of the social protection framework which operates through the welfare policies run by the labour welfare board. This helps us to understand more in detail the functioning of the contemporary development of neoliberal capitalism which essentially relies on the creation and sustenance of footloose labour in present-day India. The learning from the Indian case implies that the creation of social welfare policies and the persuasion of neoliberal policies which marginalize labour might appear as contradictory processes but go hand in hand. The contemporary social welfare measures are designed in such a way that they provide some minor relief measures but are not aimed at altering the precarious working conditions. Meanwhile, the state claims the functioning of a vibrant democracy and robust social protection network via the running of the labour welfare boards, but if critically analyzed, as this paper has attempted, these policies are equipped to provide micro-relief measures only. The concept of footloose labour throws light on the creation of an array of labour force that relies on contractual wage labour without much bargaining power, similar to the other precarious workers but the sheer magnitude and the continued reliance on the production of footlooseness has become the norm in the informal economy of India. Moreover, the Indian case throws light on the emergence of an interesting but complex triangular relationship of the state, capital and civil society who negotiate their own interests. The state along with the help of capital supports the agenda of economic growth through the use of footloose labour. Meanwhile, the labour welfare boards are also run to effectively provide micro welfare measures to construction workers, while, on the other hand, labour along with the help of civil society organizations tries to organize itself and access these welfare measures to which they are entitled too. While all these processes play out in the informal economy, it does not have a larger implication for substantially altering the precariousness of construction workers. The state tries to walk a thin line, although substantially supporting capital but at the same time tries to manage the welfare of construction workers. Thus, the state essentially manages the social relations with informal workers and civil society organizations on the one hand and the feudalistic capital relations on the other. The languishing policies and the experience of construction workers during the pandemic have brought the state to a critical juncture. The state can set up an example for other developing economies by creating a more robust policy framework which not only provides micro benefits in the form of welfare policies but substantially alter the character of informal labour relations. A good starting point would be to transform the feudalistic hiring and firing practice of workers by reducing reliance on contractors and bringing accountability to respective state governments for running the welfare boards effectively. But currently, the marginalization of footloose labour using neoliberal policies continues to threaten and demands collective action from the various stakeholders.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to two anonymous peer reviewers and the journal editor of Critical Sociology.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Pankil Goswami

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The Political Economy of Precarious Work in India: A Case of Languishing Social Policy?

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Footloose Labour and BOCWWB

Languishing Social Policy

BOCWWB and Macrostructural Changes

Operational Challenges Faced by BOCWWB

The Bases for Social Allocation

The Nature of the Social Provision

The Strategies for the Delivery of Provisions

The Ways to Finance These Provisions

The State: Intended Government Failure Wrapped in Inherent Contradictions

Pandemic and the Urgent Question of Labour

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Funding

ORCID iD

References